A Bird in the House (20 page)

She would plunk herself down on the piano bench, push up her sweater sleeves, and crash into “The Twelfth Street Rag.” The notes would jitter and prance, strut defiantly, swagger from ceiling to floor and out the window, making my
feet want to follow them, away off somewhere, far away from home, where the swinging shoes winged continually in dawns beyond our dimensions. “Tiger Rag.”

“Bye Bye Blackbird.” She would be playing so loudly that we never heard Grandfather Connor’s arrival.

“I don’t know why you waste your time on that rubbish, Edna,” he would say, for the only music he considered worthy of the name were hymn tunes and “God Save the King.”

She would ignore him and keep on playing. He would sink heavily into his oak chair.

“A man can’t hear hisself think,” he would announce.

No response. She would begin pounding out “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate.”

“Edna, cut it out this second before I lose my patience!”

Only then would my aunt stop. She would wink at me, maybe even laugh, but she would stop.

“Lose his patience indeed,” she would mutter as we went into the kitchen. “Kindly inform me when he ever found it.”

Aunt Edna was nearly thirty-three when Wes Grigg came to Manawaka. She did not seem to have changed much in appearance from my earliest memories of her. She had taken to having her straight black hair permed instead of bobbed, that was all, and her tall rangy figure was most often clad in a skirt and sweater now, instead of the smart tailored suits in paddy-green or lilac which she used to wear. Wes was taller than Aunt Edna, and distinctly middle-aged. His thick shaggy hair was the colour my mother called “pepper and salt,” black beginning to go grey. His eyebrows, too, were grey and thick and shaggy, and his herringbone tweed jacket was hairy as a horse blanket. He reminded me of the Shaggy Man in one of the
Oz
books. I did not mean this in any critical sense. It made me like him better. There was something solid
and reassuring about him, and yet he was the reverse of stern. He was quiet-spoken and never argued, but he laughed a fair amount, especially at his own jokes, which were usually pretty corny, and he did his damnedest to please Aunt Edna.

Early one evening the doorbell dinged and it was Wes.

“I thought I’d drop around to see if you’d like to go to Winnipeg in a coupla weeks’ time, Edna,” he said. “Just for the day, you know. Kester’s promised to look after everything here. I got some time coming to me. We could get the morning train on a Thursday. How about it?”

“Mercy,” my aunt said, smiling. “The bright lights would dazzle me. I haven’t been that far in ages now. I didn’t know you were rich.”

Wes reddened.

“Well, I got my pass, you know. It wouldn’t be that much for your ticket. We could see a show and have dinner, get the night train back. Anyways, what do you say?”

“Well –” my aunt said.

My mother and I, hovering in the hall like amateurish spies, gave one another a glance.

“I couldn’t help overhearing,” my mother carolled. “You
go
, Edna. You haven’t been away for I don’t know
how
long. Go on. Go ahead.”

“Well –” my aunt said again. “Well, I guess so, Wes. Thanks. I mean, it’s very nice of you.”

“You might as well stay for supper, Wes, now that you’re here,” my mother added.

“Oh – well, thanks, Beth, if you’re sure it’s okay.”

“Certainly, certainly,” my mother assured him, and flew out to the kitchen to change her mind about supper, which was to have been scrambled eggs on toast but was almost instantly turned into pancakes and maple syrup.

Aunt Edna talked in a desultory fashion to Wes for a few minutes and then left him in the living room. Grandfather Connor, who had been dozing in his chair, now became alert. His ice-blue eyes, still as penetrating as they had ever been, focussed sharply on Wes.

“Who’re you?” he demanded.

It did not seem a very auspicious beginning for a conversation. I hung around in the hall to listen, and when my brother Roddie came running down the front stairs and began to talk to me, I shushed him rapidly and shooed him into the kitchen.

“Grigg’s the name,” Wes said. “Wes Grigg. You remember me, Mr. Connor. I been here before.”

Was it possible – oh joy – that Grandfather was losing his memory? Would he no longer be able to muster up at a moment’s notice every past misdemeanor of mine? On the other hand, it could have awkward consequences, as now.

“Let me get a good look at you,” Grandfather was saying. “I seen you before – yes. What’re you doing here? Come to see Edna?”

“Well, yes.”

“We’re just going to have our supper,” Grandfather Connor said, taking his gold watch out of his vest pocket. “You’d best not stay long. We’re just going to have our supper. If we ever get it. It’s away past six.”

I looked at my own watch. It was three minutes past six.

“Well – Beth’s kindly asked me to stay,” Wes mumbled.

“What?” Grandfather Connor demanded, exaggerating his deafness as he quite often did for purposes of confounding the person to whom he was talking. Nothing makes you feel more like a moron than being required to repeat an uninspired sentence four times.

“I said – Beth’s kindly asked me to stay,” Wes said distinctly.

“Stay? Stay here? What for? What’s the woman thinking of?”

“No – to stay for supper,” Wes bellowed agonisedly.

“Oh,” Grandfather Connor said flatly. “Well, if she wants to feed the whole neighbourhood, that’s her lookout. Don’t know who she thinks pays the grocery bills, though.”

Enough was enough. I ploughed into the living room and stared at Grandfather. I did not speak. I only stared my anger, and he stared his right back. Finally I turned away.

“Hi, Wes,” I said. “Gee – what a night, eh? Think we’ll have a blizzard?”

It was February, and the wind outside sounded like the shrill hooting of demons in an ice hell. It slapped and battered against the walls of the Brick House until it seemed as though the storm windows could not hold, although I knew they would.

“Yeh, it’s terrible all right,” Wes agreed, “but I dunno, Vanessa – the forecast’s not for a blizzard.”

“Them weather men are always wrong,” my grandfather put in.

“No, they’re not,” I contradicted vehemently, as though the principle involved were one concerning my very soul’s honour. “They’re usually perfectly right. Well, they are
so
. They forecast that storm in January and we got it all right, didn’t we?”

“They can’t tell no more than what I can with that old barometer up in the verandah there,” my grandfather replied, undaunted.

I left the field temporarily and skimmed out to the kitchen to get a picture of the situation there. My mother was ladling pancake batter onto the black iron frying pan. My
aunt was opening a jar of peaches, and on her face was a look of annoyance.

“Honestly, Beth,” she was saying, “I know you mean well, honey, but you don’t have to absolutely
throw
me at the poor guy.”

“I wasn’t throwing anybody at anybody,” my mother answered placidly, something in her voice reminding me of the way Grandmother Connor used to speak, gently but with certainty. “I merely asked him to stay to supper, that’s all. If you can’t ask a person to stay to supper on a night like this, there must be something wrong with you. And I just can’t see why you didn’t agree right away to go to Winnipeg, Edna. Personally, I thought it was nice of Wes. Very nice, in fact.”

My aunt looked up from the peaches with a quizzical expression.

“Well, it was because I had a kind of notion that he was going to –”

“Going to what?” my mother enquired. “Ask you to stay overnight? So what? Really, Edna, if you were sixteen you might be upset, but
really
–”

My aunt burst out laughing.

“Beth, don’t be idiotic! I didn’t mean that. I only meant I thought he might ask me to marry him. I could, of course, be wrong. Edna Connor has never been widely known for her infallibility.”

“For Pete’s sake,” my mother said in exasperation, “what’s so worrying about it if he does? All you have to say is either Yes or No.”

“Very simple,” my aunt said gloomily, “I don’t think.”

“He’s kind,” my mother ventured.

“That’s true,” my aunt agreed. “I wish he didn’t say
some-wheres
, though.”

“Don’t be silly,” my mother said. “What does it matter? He’s got a regular job.”

“I know it, Beth. But did you know he is a Baptist?”

“So was Mother. There’s nothing wrong with being a Baptist.”

“I’m not religious,” my aunt pointed out.

“Well, you wouldn’t have to go. He’s not an unreasonable man.”

“I know he’s not. But did you know he’s got an ulcer and there’s all kinds of things he can’t eat?”

“I don’t believe it would kill you if you never ate roast pork again as long as you live,” my adamant mother replied.

“Beth – just don’t propagandise me,” my aunt pleaded.

My mother looked stricken and remorseful.

“Oh honey, I didn’t mean it to sound that way. Honestly, I didn’t. It’s just that you’ve been keeping house for Father all this time, and you’ve had so little life of your own. It’s just that it would be wonderful if you could get
out
.”

“What about you?” Aunt Edna said. “How are you going to get out?”

“It’s different for me,” my mother replied in a low voice. “I’ve had those years with Ewen. I have Vanessa and Roddie. Maybe I can’t get out. But they will.”

There was a silence. Neither of them had noticed me standing in the doorway. I felt as though I ought to vanish, as though I had been intruding on a totally private matter.

“I’m not trying to push you in the slightest,” my mother said. “But you know how much you’ve wanted to go.”

“Yes,” Aunt Edna said. “But now it comes to it – I don’t know. And I’m fond of Wes. That’s the odd part, I really am fond of him. It sounds funny coming from me, I guess, but he’s – well, he’s a good man, Beth.”

“It doesn’t sound funny at all. I know he is.”

My aunt all at once resumed her usual voice.

“And you don’t need to tell me what the song says, either. A good man nowadays is hard to find.”

“Edna –” my mother said anxiously. “What’s the matter? What’s troubling you?”

“I don’t know,” Aunt Edna hesitated. “I guess I’ve got used to being back here in the old dungeon. It’s strange, Beth. Father’s impossible, and certainly no one has said it oftener than I have. I have less patience with him than any of us has ever had, except possibly Vanessa, and she’s only fourteen, for Heaven’s sake. I know all that. But, he’s – well, I guess it’s just that I have the feeling that the
absolute
worst wouldn’t happen here, ever. Things wouldn’t actually fall apart. Do you know what I mean? We got through the Depression somehow. We never thought we would, but we did. I know it’s more by good luck than good management. I’m perfectly aware of all that. And yet –”

I backed quietly from the kitchen doorway into the dining room. I sensed that they would not really mind my overhearing as they once would have done. But I wished I had not heard, all the same.

Five minutes later Grandfather Connor’s thumping footsteps approached the kitchen.

“Beth! Are you planning on having supper tonight or tomorrow morning?”

“It’s coming right away,” my mother replied, unruffled.

“You’d best speak to that Grigg, Edna,” he went on, his voice loud enough to be heard in South Wachakwa, never mind our living room. “You better tell him he’s not to turn up just at supper-time. Don’t he have no food of his own? What’d he do for meals before he started coming here?”

“He’s been here about five times, Father,” Aunt Edna said. “And that is all. Good glory, can’t you –”

“Supper!” my mother called. “All ready now.”

After supper, when Roddie had been put to bed, my mother announced pointedly that she had some book catalogues to look through for the local library, so she thought she would just go upstairs for a while and do that. I followed her exam -ple by going up to my room to do my homework. Grandfather Connor, however, had no intention of leaving Wes and Aunt Edna alone, nor scarcely even allowing them a word in edgewise. The gist of Grandfather’s theme tonight, from the portions of it that penetrated upstairs, seemed to be that the C.N.R. was losing all the taxpayers’ money because any business the government had a hand in was bound to be inferior and if Wes had any brains he’d be working for the C.P.R. instead. At that point Wes must have been foolish enough to mention the proposed jaunt to Winnipeg, for I heard Grandfather’s explosive voice.

“
Winnipeg!
You’ll do no such thing, Edna. I’ll not have you going there with
him
!”

Winnipeg sounded like Sodom and Gomorrah, and Wes like a combination of Casanova and the Marquis de Sade.

“I’m going,” Aunt Edna said. “It’s only for one day.”

“Only for the
day
!” Grandfather Connor roared, making it apparent that they were not to deceive themselves into thinking he was one of those who believe illicit love can take place only after dark.

“This is ridiculous!” Aunt Edna snapped. “Father, can’t you please, just for once –”

“Ridiculous, is it?” Grandfather Connor asked dramatically. “Ridiculous, eh? Well, let it be ridiculous, then. You’re not going. That’s all.”

I heard his footsteps descending the basement stairs.
He would sit in his familiar rocking chair beside the furnace. That chair must have been the most vocal one in the whole world. Perhaps something was eccentric about its timbers, or perhaps its maker had designed it to produce that
screee-scraaaw
at the slightest movement of its rockers. As usual Grandfather would now register his state of mind unmistakably until he heard Wes leave the house. Aunt Edna, on her way up to the bathroom, poked her head into my bedroom.

“You know something, kiddo? The rocking chair business has gone on so long now that I hardly even find it embarrassing any more. Remember that, in a few years’ time, eh?”

“Why?”

“Because,” Aunt Edna said, and although she was smiling, neither of us took it as a joke, “it’ll be your turn then.”